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Sunday, 27 November 2016

The Political Lynching of Jackie Walker Continues

The Senior Priest at Chapel Field Road Methodist Church who decided to cancel first and ask questions later

In Israel the Zionists don’t engage in black
propaganda using the Jewish Chronicle, the far-Right Zionist propaganda rag
that is edited by neo-con and ex-editor of the Daily ExpressStephen Pollard.[Jedwabne – The Polish Village Where Up to
900 Jews Were Burnt Alive by Fellow Poles]. They are simply locked up, ‘administratively detained’
without trial. Only today we learn of a Palestinian
Israeli who has been gaoled for
writing a satirical Facebook post criticising Palestinians who rejoice at the
wild fires in Israel.Like most police
states, and to Palestinians Israel is a Jewish police state, Israel’s rulers
understand satire least of all.

In Britain the Zionist
lobby doesn’t have the power (yet) to gaol their opponents, so they defame,
libel and lie about them instead. Jackie
Walker, the Black Jewish anti-racist activist who has been suspended, like
thousands of other socialists in the Labour Party, by Iain McNicol's henchmen who have been allowed to continue as Labour's civil service, was due to speak at a
dinner hosted by Norwich Palestine Solidarity Campaign today. The dinner was due to be held in the Chapel
Field Road Methodist Church.

The Board of Deputies original statement which was later amended to take out the 'Jew baiter' reference - no doubt as a result of legal advice

The Board of Deputies of British
Jews, a self-selecting Zionist body, issued
a statement in the name of its Vice President, Marie van der Zyl, accusing
Jackie of being an ‘unapologetic Jew baiter’.
This was reprinted in the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish News on-line.
Both the latter papers, no doubt mindful of the laws of defamation, removed the
comments and replaced it with something more anodyne.

The behaviour of Chapel Field Road Methodist Church towards Jackie Walker resembles Judas more
than Jesus. Instead of standing up to
the attacks by the Zionists like the Dean of Lichfield Cathedral, they
bowed to the pressure and without bothering to investigate the allegations
cancelled the booking and promised never to let their premises again to Norwich PSC.

Their behaviour is contemptible. They have bowed down to racists and
cancelled a meeting organised by a solidarity group with the Palestinians. They have accepted the accusation that Jackie
Walker, a long standing anti-racist and anti-fascist activist is anti-Jewish when
she herself is a Jewish anti-Zionist.

Church facilities that were cancelled and from which Norwich PSC has been banned from using

This is one more example
of a well funded smear campaign, supported by every mainstream racist
newspaper, that targets anti-racist opponent of Israeli Apartheid. The President of the Board of Deputies of British
Jews, Jonathan Arkush, only two weeks ago welcomed
the election of the racist bigot Donald Trump as President of the United States
and ran into a storm of protest. It was
a decision that even 175 young Zionists found too
much to bear. Having welcomed Trump
and his anti-Semitic advisor Stephen Bannon of Breibart, the Board of Deputies now
protests about the ‘anti-Semitism’ of a Black-Jewish anti-racist!

British Zionists
are waging a campaign to deny elementary freedom of speech to anti-Zionists and
supporters of the Palestinians. That is
why the decision of the national leadership of Palestine Solidarity Campaign to ignore these attacks is wrong. They have, to the best of my knowledge, not
yet responded to this attack on basic democratic rights.

Chapel Field Road Church

I have written an Open
Letter to the Rev. Deborah Caulk of Chapel Field Road Methodist Church protesting the decision of her superior, the Revd. Catherine Hutton and calling on the Rev. Hutton to
apologise and make amends for her actions.
Repentance used to be something the church was quite good at, let us see
whether the tradition has been continued amongst Norwich Methodists.

Tony Greenstein

Open
Letter to Rev. Deborah Caulk of Chapel Field
Road Methodist Church

I spoke to you earlier tonight about a meeting that
Norwich Palestine Solidarity Campaign had booked at your church. Jackie Walker was due to speak at the meeting. You are, as you told me, a student priest and
I should really have spoken to Catherine Hutton, the senior priest. I am therefore addressing this letter to both
of you.

I
understand from the Facebook
message from the Board of Deputies of British Jews that you cancelled the meeting, after being
contacted by them and being told that Jackie Walker was a ‘Jew
baiter’. That particular description has
now been taken down, no doubt on legal advice.
I also understand that you have also apologised for
hosting the meeting in the first place.

I am a
friend of Jackie as well as being Jewish.
The allegation that she is anti-Semitic or a ‘Jew-baiter’ is wholly
false as well as being defamatory.
Jackie is herself Black and Jewish.
Her ‘crime’, if crime it be, is that she supports the Palestinians and
is an anti-Zionist, as indeed I am.
Jackie, like many Jews, draws the lesson from the Holocaust and
anti-Semitism historically, that racism, including the racism of Israel and the
Zionist movement which gave birth to it, is wrong. The Holocaust does not give anyone, Jewish or
otherwise, a free pass to become racists.

The Board
of Deputies is an unrepresentative group which does not represent secular Jews
in this country . It has a history of being an apologist and worse
for Israel’s racism, colonialism and mass murder of the Palestinians. It justified without hesitation Israel’s
murderous attack on Gaza two years ago in which 2,200 people were killed,
nearly all of them civilians, by the deliberate shelling of residential areas,
schools and hospitals. Over 550 children
were killed in that barbarous attack. Just
70 Israelis were killed, nearly all of them military casualties. The only time the Board is interested in ‘anti-Semitism’
is when it is defending Israel.

Only last
week the President of the Board of Deputies, Jonathan Arkush, was criticised by
nearly 200 young British Jews because he had sent a message congratulating
Donald Trump on his election victory. An
election victory in which Trump has worked hand-in-hand with some of the most
vile anti-Semites, including Steve Bannon of Breibart, who he has just
appointed as his Strategic Advisor.

Of course
you were not to know any of this. However
you were under a duty to make some form of inquiry before you made your
decision to trample on free speech and cancel the meeting. The Methodist Church has had a good record on
Palestine and your behaviour mars that record.
If you want to know what the situation in Israel/Palestine is really
like you could for example look up the fact that only this week Israel
has been seeking to demolish a Bedouin village Umm al-Hiran in
Israel’s Negev desert in order to make way for a Jewish town. The village has been there 60 years and the
Bedouin only moved there after having been previously expelled from their lands
further south.

Would you
have cancelled a meeting 20 years ago on Apartheid in South Africa because
apologists for the Apartheid regime objected?
They too might have said it was racist against White people. Would you have believed them?

As
someone who is Jewish I am particularly irked by your cowardice because, just
like White South Africans, Jews opposed to what Israel does take considerable
flack because we oppose Jewish racism.
It doesn’t take much courage on your part to resist such overtures.

I post
below and attach as a file the statement which was jointly issued by Lichfield
Cathedral and Jews for Justice for Palestinians when Lichfield came under
similar attack. On that occasion the
Church held strong to the Christian message of supporting the weak and
oppressed rather than bowing to the oppressor.

I suggest
that the least you can do to make amends is to issue an unqualified apology to
both Jackie Walker and Norwich PSC and to reassure the latter that they are
welcome to book your premises in the future.

As to the
truth or otherwise of what Jackie actually said, I refer you to my article The
Lynching of Jackie Walker in Open
Democracy. You have unfortunately continued
that good Christian tradition of joining in with the lynch mob.

We, Christians and Jews who
advocate for justice for Palestinians, would like to put on record our
admiration for the Dean of Lichfield, with a group of local Christians from
other churches, in hosting the festival 'Holding Palestine in the Light' in
Lichfield Cathedral last month, despite opposition from some quarters.

We regret the intemperate attacks
to which the hosts were subjected. The language used and the opinions expressed
would be rejected by many – including many Jews – in this country.

There were Jews among the members
of a group from Liverpool, twinned with the West Bank village of Bil’in, who
delivered an exhibition of Palestinian children’s photos to Lichfield Cathedral
for the festival.

The founding chair of the
Edinburgh Liberal Jewish Community was moved to send a message of support
saying: “Many Jews, including many in religious communities like ours, welcome
discussions like this conference.”

We find it disquieting that the
Lichfield conference has been seized on by those who seek to silence criticism
of Israeli policies. The Israeli government’s near half century occupation,
with its appropriation of Palestinian land and resources for Israeli use, and
its abrogation of

Palestinians' basic human rights,
is conducted in direct contravention of several international laws including
the Fourth Geneva Convention.

All around us there are attempts
to equate criticism of Israeli government policies with antisemitism. This form
of censorship seeks to halt legitimate discourse about the history and politics
of Israel and Palestine.

Whether we are Christians or Jews
– secular or observant – our core values are ultimately based on the Hebrew
scriptures as well as the values of the Enlightenment.

“. . . let justice roll down like
waters and righteousness like an ever-

flowing stream.” Amos 5, v 24.

The oppression of Palestinians by
a succession of Israeli governments is neither just nor righteous and it is not
antisemitic to point this out, to speak truth to power. It is our duty as Jews,
as Christians – indeed as citizens – to work for a just peace for all in
Israel-Palestine.